


speculatus

by orphan_account



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Canon Asexual Character, Coming Untouched, Do Not Archive (The Magnus Archives), Face Slapping, Humiliation, Imprisonment, M/M, Monsters, October Prompt Challenge, Spanking, Unhappy Ending, ace subtype: kinky asexual, anyway this is sort of TMA Season 4 spoilers? or a hypothetical alternate ending?, because i love to be immediately jossed, hitting publish 50 minutes before MAG158 drops, i have no idea how to properly tag it, sorry - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-17
Updated: 2019-10-17
Packaged: 2020-12-21 01:09:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21066275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Jon and Martin are trapped in the panopticon.





	speculatus

**Author's Note:**

> Due to some life stuff I'm doing kinktober/promptober approx October 15-November 15, and being really loosey goosey with my prompts and lengths and if I post or not. My main aim is just to write more than I otherwise would be! Anyway thank you for reading!
> 
> Prompt: Mindless.

"You mustn't, Jon," Martin pleads, though there's so much less vulnerability in his friendly, rounded voice these days. Less stutter — is that because he is no longer anxious talking to Jon, or no longer anxious about anything? No, it's because— 

A sharp crack of a slap cuts through the static before he can finish that thought and it's gone. "Was that really necessary?" Jon asks, usual tired edge gone acid with this denial. 

"Yes? Yes. Sorry. Did it work?"

"I don't know, it's —" Jon exhales hard, audibly. "I think it stopped it. But not — I can't help it, Martin, the moment I start thinking I just find myself _knowing_..."

"But you can't, Jon." Martin grips the bar next to his head where Jon is slumped against the cell door. "Not here. It's — you have to stop, all right?"

"Oh, I'll just stop thinking then, shall I?" Jon snaps, and then Martin kisses him, and for a moment he does.

It's nice to see Martin flustered, nostalgic, when he pulls back with pink cheeks and wide eyes. Nicer still to feel the warm tingle in his stomach. He's not sure he's capable of actual happiness these days, but there's a little wavering candle flame lit in him at that kiss. At Martin still, after all this time— but surely the Lonely would have been sure to snuff that out— unless— 

Martin slaps him again.

"You're, you were doing it again!" he says, as Jon rubs his sore cheek thoughtfully. "Christ, Jon, do you have no self control?"

The twin warmth of humiliation joins the shy pleasure of being liked, and Jon shivers. 

"How do you know," Jon says, hoping his voice is dry and steady (and free of compulsion, it's not really a question, and he is careful not to think too hard about it and let Martin answer for himself. Or choose not to answer.) "When I'm..."

"I can feel it," Martin says. "I can feel you. Pulling. I dunno, it's hard to describe. It's like when you force people to speak the truth, or a tape recorder turning on — I can just tell, that something's about to happen, which means you must be trying to Know."

Jon thinks on that (carefully, carefully, trying to meter out his thoughts even though they all come in a rush like a burst pipe, always have.) It's reassuring, to think that Martin is still so connected to Beholding. Makes him selfishly grateful, that however deep Peter sunk his claws at least one of his assistants still belongs to the Eye, alive and undevoured.

Well, until Jon eats him.

"Christ," he says, pained. "We have to do something. I can't — stop myself. It's not just... it's this place, Martin, the panopticon, it's making me powerful." Too powerful. Uncontrollably so. He can taste the static build up on his tongue, all acrid oily residue. 

Martin brings up a hand and touches his cheek lightly, where he's slapped Jon twice now. "Course it is," he says tiredly. "That's the excuse you'll use later, that it doesn't count, that you were forced into this."

"I _am_ being forced into this!" Jon shouts, deeply outraged. He hisses, "I didn't choose this." Knows without any special information from the Eye that Elias is somewhere finding that statement hilarious. 

"You followed me," says Martin. "Me and Peter."

"That's not! It was a trap, Martin, I didn't exactly come here to kill you." He'd wanted to save him. He hadn't known what else to do. He'd tried, so hard, to reach out, to include other people, and where did that get him? He can't win by pushing people away and he can't win with empathy. He just — can't win.

"You won't kill me," Martin says. "Peter said I'd be changed, but not dead."

"Why you still believe anything Peter Lukas says I do _not_ know," Jon grouses. Which isn't the point, it's not the point at all. And the worst thing is, that ambiguity makes him want it. His curiosity itches like an old scab, aching to know just how Martin will change, just what he'll change into. 

Some of that hunger must show in his eyes because Martin huffs in longsuffering resignation to Jon's bullshit. He's stopped touching Jon's face, but Jon can still feel the warmth when he hit him.

"No," he says, "There's still hope. Slapping might not work forever, but it is working enough. I need to be — unable to think coherently."

"So what, I just beat you?" Martin asks, skeptical.

"I was thinking something a little more... prurient," Jon says awkwardly. Martin takes a moment to get it and then his breath catches and he goes gratifyingly flustered again.

"Oh. Oh! Um." He reaches up to scratch behind his ear. "Really? I mean, I thought you- you didn't. Don't."

"Typically," says Jon. "But this situation is hardly typical." When that doesn't seem to be enough to convince Martin, he fumbles for a better script, tries to remember what he's seen of other people's gentleness. "I do like you," he says, which is true enough that the way Martin flinches at that statement hurts. "And I have. Some experience. A variety of experience." He tried everything approximately once and then lost interest in it forever. "But it doesn't have to strictly speaking be sex. Per se."

Martin looks at him warily. "What else."

"Well," says Jon. "Pain is very effective."

"Are we back to me poking your eyes out again?" Martin demands.

"Something a little less extreme, I think." Jon fidgets, embarrassed. "More slapping. Ah, spanking. Biting. That sort of thing."

Martin's brows raise, but cool startlement is better than his annoyed certainty that Jon was shaping up more excuses again, that this was just like the Eye thing and he'd demand something that Martin would of course have to say no to, thereby— 

He slaps Jon a third time.

"Sorry," says Jon.

Martin looks at him and sighs. "Yeah, all right. Kinky sex it is then."

"Well don't sound so enthusiastic about it," snipes Jon.

Martin rolls his eyes. "You're lucky we're not doing this for real, because I don't accept backtalk. Either you are enjoying yourself or we stop."

"I'm afraid we don't have the liberty of stopping, Martin," says Jon. But then, after a moment, he feels a little contrite, and adds: "I won't hate it."

"Don't sound so enthusiastic about it," Martin mocks, and then his hand is in Jon's hair, pulling sharp and gloriously hard. This time when they kiss it's not as shocking, feels inevitable, of course Martin likes kissing. Jon could take it or leave it, the strangeness of another face too close to his, Martin's thick wet tongue in his mouth. He keeps his eyes open.

When Martin is finished with their kiss he presses much nicer little follow ups along the line of Jon's jaw, and those make Jon smile, make Jon sad for the sweet man who is mostly faded now, replaced by someone numb and apathetic, burnt out. He puts a hand on Martin's waist, gentle and genteel. 

"Martin," he says, nudging, because romance isn't the point, even if he likes it deep down.

"I know, I know. Spanking then? Not like we have a lot to work with trapped in here."

"You've always been a bit of a MacGyver," Jon says, thinking of corkscrews and stolen fire extinguishers.

"S'pose." 

"Just — take me out of my head, please."

"Yeah," says Martin. "Sorry. Forgot how much feeling things sucks." He gives a little shrug. Probably he doesn't really want to be here, would rather be alone in— 

"For christ's sake, Jon," Martin says, exasperated, and bites him hard; the hand in his hair wrenches his head back so Martin can bruise his throat with blunt teeth. He shoves Jon up against the wall, frustrated, and Jon makes a breathless happy noise.

"Turn around," Martin says. "Clothes off."

Embarrassing instructions to comply with, but Jon prefers the simply brevity of them. There's no emotional demand in them, no expectation of pleasure. He turns around and takes his shirt off, and then his trousers. The stone of the prison is rough against his skin when Martin puts a hand between his shoulder blades and holds him there.

"Could be the other way around, you know," Martin tells Jon, free hand tracing the curve of Jon's buttocks with a reverence he's not sure any part of him really deserves. "Could be I'm supposed to kill you here. Or — betray you. Something Lonely."

"I thought the ritual of He Who Walks Alone failed quite some time ago," says Jon, trying not to let his old paranoia flare, trying to ignore the sick pit in his stomach. "What would be the point?"

"Yeah, you're probably right," says Martin, desolate, and before Jon can ask what that's supposed to mean, they've begun. Martin's palm cracks across his ass.

It doesn't really hurt that much at first — Jon has developed a fairly high pain tolerance after all. 

But it's impossible to concentrate around, to

think, with the irregular violence of

Martin sparking humiliation up his spine and bright blooming warmth

over his skin. Jon was already

quite,

quite malleable, the discomfort of kissing and

the way each slap to his cheek

had rung so perfect

in his heart.

So it doesn't take long.

"Noisy," Martin murmurs in a pause, and Jon is aware he's whimpering, grazing his nose and lips on the stone. The bright sting of the spankings are jarring but it's when Martin stops that he really feels it, the radiating heat of sore skin, grounding and constant. His cock grew heavy at some point, even rubbed raw against the wall. His humiliation has been subsumed along with everything else, though he's still wound too tight — they're in a prison below the Archives, for god's sake, it's the most inappropriate time and place for this possible. He wonders if Elias is watching. 

That question must stir up the silt of the static, because Martin starts in again.

He works hard to get Jon there, works himself into a sweat. Jon would appreciate it if he could hold himself together long enough to process that fact. As it is, he feels too built up an coalesced, statistic and arousal, too much holding back and holding off and he doesn't know what will give way first, his mind or his body or his heart. Maybe all of them at once, maybe he'll go supernova.

He just comes instead, and Martin says, "Really, Jon?" in an annoyed voice, and stops. But he's too far away for it to matter, the words distant and meaningless, unable to be louder than the rush through him. 

It sounds like blood pounding in his ears, but does he even have a heartbeat anymore?

Jon doesn't move even when Martin stops, whole body giving out, exhausted as if he's been tossed up onto shore after drowning. There's something cleansing about it. And, lost in his own head and his own still-attempting-to-function-as-human body, he practically forgets Martin is there.

And when he gathers himself together enough, he realizes Martin isn't.

"Martin?" he calls, quavering. Pushes back off the wall, ignoring the grazes marking his skin, the prickle of the air over it, exposed. He turns unsteadily, one hand braced for balance, but there's nobody else in the cell but him.

"Martin," he says again, certain this is more of Martin avoiding him. "Come back. I'm not going to — ah, for Chrissake." He still feels awfully out of it, but he bends and finds his trousers, struggles himself into them even though they hurt, in case that's one intimacy too many. "There. Just—" 

It bothers him a little, to think that Martin might be avoiding the aftermath, hurting Jon because he's too scared Jon will hurt him first. He feels all uneven and at a loss, and the squirming vulnerability the spanking has peeled off his exoskeleton to expose tells him it's his fault. For enjoying himself, or for not enjoying it enough. For making Martin — for letting Martin. There should have been more kisses.

"Martin?" he says again, and this time he stretches his powers deliberately, half expecting to be slapped for it, wondering if he can find the spot in the room where Martin is standing all out of sight, reaching and— 

There's nobody there. The static recedes, and Jon leans baffled against the wall.

In another gaol cell, across the city, Elias sighs. "Well," he says. "It seems you won your bet. How very disappointing." 

Peter Lukas chuckles softly. "Seems I did. You know, I truly didn't expect that?" He claps Elias' shoulder. "I'll go collect my winnings, then. I imagine he'll be very glad to see me."

"Hm," Elias says. "I'd hurry, though. The Detective has almost returned, and it won't take long for she and her glorified blood hound to track Jon down."

"Quick as a whistle," Peter says. He pauses in the doorway. "Shame. The more your Archivist eats, the more he repulses everyone around him. Martin's certainly a prize, and I'm very proud of him, of course, but I would have found that quite compelling." 

"Oh, I'm sure there will be plenty to find _compelling_ in store for you yet, Peter," Elias says with a little smile, as he watches the static around a livid Jon build and build and build.


End file.
